Melancholy
by Random1377
Summary: A short tale of sadness and regret.


Disclaimer: the rights to the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion are owned by Studio Gainax, not me. Should they, or anyone affiliated with them, request it, I will remove this story from the web. Thank you.

Melancholy

By Random1377

Hikari stood at her window, watching the rain pound the streets of Tokyo-3 unmercifully. It was past midnight… well past midnight, when all good children should be asleep and dreaming. Yet there she was, staring into the night, watching her best friend disappear into the distance.

There was nothing she could do.

There was never anything she could do when it came to Asuka – the girl did as she chose. But Hikari could not help but feel that she should have done _something_ to stop the redhead from going out into the night. She knew very little of what had happened to Asuka during the last angel fight, only that it had something to do with Asuka's mind… and that her friend could not recover.

With a weary sigh, Hikari rested her head against the windowpane and let her eyes slip closed. Nothing to be done, she told herself, there was nothing to be done. Asuka's demons were too dark, it seemed, to share with her best friend, so Hikari was forced into the role of outsider, condemned to powerless observation and heartsick dreams of a world wherein she had the ability to hold her friend and assure her that everything would be alright.

Slowly, Hikari turned away from the window, leaning against the wall and sliding to the floor, where she hugged her knees to her chest… rested her head against her folded arms… and wept.

_If Asuka had any tears to shed that night, the rain surely would have swept them away. Yet in spite of the agony inside of her, she was dry-eyed and nearly unblinking, moving through the town like a ghost in the rain, seeing nothing of her surroundings as her feet carried her aimlessly from intersection to intersection._

_Only once did she glance down – as she passed a flooding storm drain, clogged with leaves and refuse until the water began to creep up to edge of the curb._

_Dirty, her mind offered up this single word as explanation for its deviance from its random wandering._

_Dirty… like her._

_Slowly, Asuka raised her head and continued walking._

_On some level, she knew she should go home… but where was that, exactly? Hikari's, with her kindness and soothing words? Why bother? Asuka did not deserve kindness. Back to the place she 'lived' with Shinji and Misato? Again – why? They were probably celebrating her absence even as she walked the city streets, raising glasses or cans in jubilant toasts to her failure._

_It made her want to scream._

_Wasn't it just weeks ago when she had been indomitable? How had she fallen so low – how had she lost so unbelievably??_

_Unimaginable.__ No. Never._

_Her name was Asuka Langley Souryu – Designated Second Child. Pilot of Evangelion Unit 02. She was undefeatable. She was…_

_…unclean._

_From the dimness, a shape defined itself. A girl – a Child – carrying an umbrella in one hand… a bag of groceries in the other. The person Asuka hated more than any other in this world, standing before her in the downpour and saying… what? Her name? Asuka did not even know. Nothing made sense to her anymore – not even the Japanese language._

_Words rang in Asuka's mind – unassociated, fragmented bits of dialogue that somehow defined her life. _

_Failure.__ Useless. Hopeless. Damaged. Lost._

_…lost._

_A soft hand wrapped around Asuka's wrist, and she was being led away, the driving rain now pattering against the umbrella held over her head. Where they were going, she had no idea. Then again, at that moment, she could not have cared less._

_Even if she was being led to a dark alley to be raped and murdered, she could not sink any lower than she already had._

_Forgotten behind them, the small bag of groceries slowly began to fill up with rainwater._

In silence, Rei guided the errant Second Child through the desolate streets, ignoring everything in their path. What the other pilot was doing out at this hour, the blue-haired girl could not say. Nor, in all honesty, could she say why she had not left the girl to her own devices.

They certainly could not be deemed close.

Even saying 'acquaintances' was pushing the threshold of the word, as Souryu had shown her nothing but contempt and ill-concealed hatred from the day she had arrived in Toky-3. Not quite enemies. Nothing close to friends. They were simply two people who knew, and were required to work with each other.

Nothing more.

Rei pushed the door to her apartment open, drawing Asuka inside and dropping the umbrella carelessly in the hall. Leading the girl into her sparse living quarters, Rei guided her to stand by the edge of her bed, ignoring the rapidly spreading pool of water at the redhead's feet as she pulled a clean hand towel out of a small basket of clean laundry and offered it to her guest.

When Asuka made no move to take it, Rei waved her free hand carefully in front of the girl's face.

She got no response.

Slowly, she set the towel on top of Asuka's head.

Still, no response.

The towel was soaked in an instant.

Considering the situation, Rei found that she really had few options. Asuka was beginning to shiver in the cold, perpetually air-conditioned apartment – an atmosphere that Rei herself had long since gotten accustomed too, and had never even considered asking to have repaired.

Asuka would need to be warmed if she wanted to avoid getting sick… and it was fairly clear that she was not going to be able to do it herself.

Conveniently forgetting that there were a myriad reasons for her actions, Rei focused on the fact that the Commander would not want one of the Children to be too ill to pilot, and slowly began unbuttoning Asuka's shirt. She worked carefully, giving the Second every chance to pull away or push her back, and after several moments she had succeeded in getting the redhead down to her underclothes.

Rei waited for twenty heartbeats, anticipating that the Second would either come to her senses and start shouting, or finish undressing on her own. When neither came to pass, Rei stepped forward into Asuka's personal space and reached her arms around the redhead's shivering shoulders, seeking the clasp on the girl's bra with her fingertips and sliding it free, allowing the garment to slip down Asuka's limp arms and fall to the floor with a dull splat.

Hesitantly, Rei knelt at Asuka's feet, slipping her fingers into the elastic on the other girl's panties and waiting for some sign of resistance before drawing them down.

She received none.

Allowing the sodden item to lay on the floor, Rei took Asuka by the hand and led her towards her small shower. Sliding the door open, she realized that there was no way the redhead would do anything more than stand under the water, and just staring at her legs, Rei could see several prominent streaks of dirt, as if the girl had fallen down at some point and never bothered to brush herself off.

Nodding to herself, the First drew her own clothes off, allowing them to lie where they had fallen and stepping into the shower stall, pulling Asuka with her.

_The warm water cascaded over Asuka's body like a balm, gradually heating her skin until the shaking in her muscles subsided. Under most circumstances, the idea of being this close – and this vulnerable – to the First Child would have struck Asuka as annoying, if not downright revolting… but somehow, in leaving Hikari's house perhaps, she had put herself on hold._

_Even blinking seemed to require monumental effort._

_The First was touching her – not sexually, but close enough to incite uncomfortable thoughts – and still, Asuka found that she could not even murmur a complaint. Smooth hands spread soapy water across Asuka's shoulders and back, gently turning her to allow the spray from the showerhead to wash her clean. Then, and for this Asuka DID close her eyes, she felt Rei's hands massaging shampoo into her scalp._

_Asuka wanted to cry. The person she hated most in the world was touching her like a mother touches her child, and the tenderness of the contact shredded Asuka's heart. She tilted her head back unconsciously as Rei ran her fingers through her hair, meticulously rinsing every last trace of shampoo clear before working in a handful of conditioner._

_Asuka's hair was too long not to require this step._

For a moment, all was quiet as Rei waited for the conditioner to take effect in Asuka's hair, silently thanking the pushy store clerk that had insisted she take a sample-sized bottle of the stuff home with her to try. She considered the Second's slim body, ultimately averting her eyes as she realized she could see visible signs of weight loss. The redhead was not anorexic – not by a long shot – but she was undeniably thinner than when she had first arrived.

It made Rei uncomfortable to think of the boisterous Second Child wasting away in her bedroom as Ikari and Major Katsuragi begged her to please eat something. There was no way she could know that this image was anywhere even close to the truth, but she did not doubt that Asuka had missed more than a few meals lately.

Pushing the dismal vision of a full plate of food being pushed away, Rei guided Asuka's head back under the water, washing away the conditioner before turning the faucet off and opening the shower door. Leaving Asuka where she was, Rei padded to her dryer and pulled it open. She only had two towels, but thankfully, both happened to be in the dryer. Taking both, she draped one around her shoulders and brought the other to Asuka, first offering it to her – in case she was regaining her senses – then carefully wrapping it around the girl's body.

_Asuka stared down as the First Child dried her, a dull sense of amazement worming its way into her stupor and making her shake her head, a gesture missed by the other girl._

_Though she had not thought it possible, Asuka had fallen lower than ever before._

_To imagine that she, the greatest Evangelion pilot of them all, would end up naked and soaking wet in Rei Ayanami's apartment being toweled dry by someone she had slapped across the face not three days prior._

_If she had access to a gun, she was certain that she could have gathered the mental fortitude to put it in her mouth and squeeze the trigger._

Rei finished drying the Second Child, leaving several areas damp in an effort to avoid anything inappropriate, and rose to her feet, somewhat at a loss for what to do next. She could dry the Second's clothes, she mused, but from the way the girl was swaying on her feet, Rei guessed that she was barely holding herself upright. She would never be able to stay awake for an entire drying cycle, let alone that _and_ a trip home.

Not at that hour. Not in that rain.

Not while Rei had any human decency in her.

Without a word, Rei turned to her bed, pulling the covers back and gesturing for Asuka to lie down. When she did not move, Rei put a hand on the redhead's shoulder and led her to the edge of the bed, turning her around and urging her back onto the mattress, where Asuka finally settled in.

As soon as the Second's head hit the pillow, her eyes slid shut, and her body relaxed – as if she was waiting only until she was lying down before passing out… or, perhaps, as if she had never truly been awake at all, and was wandering around until someone found her and reminded her that she was asleep.

With a minute sigh, Rei gathered up Asuka's clothes, throwing them all into her dryer and turning it on. Her own clothes, she left on the floor. She could clean them anytime.

Satisfied that she had done all she could, Rei stared down at the redhead.

There was no love between them. Asuka hated her with everything that she was. Rei would gain no benefit from this small act of kindness – even the idea that the Commander would be upset if one of the pilots was ill seemed ludicrous, upon reflection. If it mattered to him, why would he have allowed her to be tromping around in the rain?

Also, there was the matter of where she would sleep. Her bed was small, but it would accommodate them both – and the notion of sleeping on the bare linoleum floor spent a sum total of three seconds in Rei's mind before being cast out as both stupid and pointless.

Since Asuka was near the edge of the bed, Rei was forced to clamber over her to get in, a task she undertook with great care so as to avoid jostling the Second and waking her from her troubled slumber. As Rei reached the other side of the bed and pulled the covers back, though, the silence of the apartment was broken by a softly whispered, completely unanswerable question.

"…why did it have to be you?"

Rei considered replying… but there was nothing she could say that would have any meaning to the weary redhead.

Slowly, Rei slid under the covers and closed her eyes.

Once, in the middle of the night, she was sure that she felt Asuka embrace her… but when she opened her eyes, the redhead was still lying in exactly the same place she had been when she had fallen asleep.

When Rei woke in the morning, Asuka was gone.

Rei never saw her again.

The End

Author's Notes: nothing really to note here, other than the fact that Rei could very easily have spent episodes 23 and 24 without seeing Asuka even once – and if she saw her after the explosion of Unit 00, she probably would not have remembered an encounter like the one described in this story anyway.

Acknowledgement – the idea for this story was taken from a copy of Angelic Impact, an EVA hentai doujinshi compilation that occasionally has some non-sexual stories pop up. The only thing I really changed from the doujin was the fact that, in the story, Rei dried Asuka's clothes, and the fact that Asuka was gone in the morning, everything else is pretty much played out exactly as I wrote it. Also, I have no idea what was spoken between them, as I have an un-translated copy, but the doujin ends with a few frames of dialogue between the two, and Asuka crying.

…I'd love to know what they're saying.

Pre-read on this story was by Akodo Tim since he's a huge Rei fanboy and this story makes her seem like a saint, and by Audient Void… though I never thought to ask if he favors the First or the Second.

Feedback is always welcome on any site with reviewing capabilities or by e-mailing me directly at random1377(at-sign)yahoo(dot)com.


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